The Girl Who Smiled Beads
Page 23
To the Body Temp Yoga team, Heather Piper, Christie Rafanan, Brenna Barry, and Chadd Schaefer: Thank you for reminding me to pause, breathe, and sweat it all out.
To the storytellers who enabled me to find the beats and rhythm of my words, including many I know only through your art: Mukamana, Mucyechuru and Musaza, Nina Simone, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Ruby Sales, Chinua Achebe, Elie Wiesel, W. G. Sebald, Hayao Miyazaki, and others who live in my ways of being. Your sense of wonder has been a ticket to this adventure. Thank you for helping me to hear my own heartbeat and breath, and to see beyond labels.
To my communities all over the world, those of you who share and who teach me how to expand and deepen my ways of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling all that keeps us alive. Thank you.
FROM ELIZABETH
I will forever be profoundly grateful to you, Clemantine, for the chance to work together on this. Thank you for trusting me.
Claire, it’s been an amazing gift to have you in my life as well. I hope I’ve done justice to yours.
Deep gratitude to Rachel Klayman and Molly Stern at Crown, for their unwavering belief in this book and their intense commitment to share it with the world; to Mark Lotto, for his vision and care from start to finish; to Kris Dahl, for insisting that I at least meet Clemantine for coffee; to Elyse Cheney, for sticking up for me; to Julie Tate, for saving me from my own mistakes; to Maggie Grainger, for listening; to Amelia Zalcman, for vetting; to Harvey Schwartz, for helping me understand; to Dick Duane, for going far beyond the call of any father-in-law.
To the Thomases, for treating me like family; and to Joshua, Vicki, and Hassan, for showing me Rwanda.
To Inga Davis, Anton Krukowski, Mark Lukach, Wendy MacNaughton, Emily Newman, and Maria Streshinsky, for reading and providing incredible feedback.
To Taffy Brodesser-Akner, for reading not only chapters but also endless texts and hysterical emails, and for shouldering the emotional burden as only a wife could. Your friendship saw me through.
To Hannah, for reading and for still wanting to be a writer, and for making me incredibly proud; to Audrey, for exhaustively searching for a title and for not wanting to be a writer, and for buoying my heart; to both of them, for putting up with a grumpy mother. To my parents, for supporting me, always.
Dan, I love you utterly. Thank you, always, for everything.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Clemantine Wamariya is a storyteller, public speaker, social entrepreneur, and human rights advocate. Born in Kigali, Rwanda, and displaced by conflict, Clemantine migrated through seven African countries as a child. At age twelve, she was granted refugee status in the United States and went on to receive a B.A. in comparative literature from Yale University. Clemantine now uses stories drawn from her experiences to catalyze change and create community. She lives in San Francisco.
Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor to Outside magazine, and frequently writes for Vogue and other publications. She is the recipient of a New York Press Club Award in feature reporting, a Lowell Thomas Award in travel writing, and a GLAAD Media Award for coverage of LGBT issues. In addition, her work has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award, a James Beard Award, and a Dart Award for coverage of trauma. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two daughters.
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